


Midnight Visitors

by distantattraction



Category: Hatoful Kareshi | Hatoful Boyfriend
Genre: Gen, Ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 03:13:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17236271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/distantattraction/pseuds/distantattraction
Summary: It's been a long time since Yuuya has truly spent a night alone.





	Midnight Visitors

**Author's Note:**

> I'm always thinking about Yuuya

It's been a long, long time since Yuuya has spent a night alone. He gets the usual visitors for someone his age with his penchant for flirting. He extends quite a few invitations, and although many turn him down, there are plenty of boys from school and girls from the city who take him up on it. Those are fun, easy nights.

Then, of course, there are work nights. Leone comes over to debrief him or to hear Yuuya's reports on Iwamine’s various experiments. Those are less fun, but still relatively easy. It's just work. He knows how to do his job. He's not a child anymore. He's _the_ agent assigned to surveil Iwamine. Work isn't hard.

What's hard are the nights when he doesn't have visitors graciously crossing the threshold to his little apartment. The nights when they just appear, unbidden, beside his kitchen counter or in the corner of his bedroom.

The first of these midnight visitors was a Dove Party agent Yuuya met on his third real mission, barely fourteen and under Leone’s constant supervision. The weight of a firearm was still uncomfortable in his grip. No matter how many hours Yuuya spent on the firing range, being out in the field was different. Firing at real targets was different. That was why there were two agents assigned to provide Leone with covering fire: Yuuya was too new and inexperienced to be trusted to keep Leone safe on his own.

They were right not to trust him. Even though Yuuya spotted the Hawk Party agent long before he fired, even though he had him in his sights, he still missed. The shot gave away his position, and the Hawk agent returned fire.

Yuuya remembers with vivid clarity his comrade tackling him. He can remember hitting the ground. He can remember feeling the other agent’s body jerk as a Hawk Party bullet buried itself in his back. He can remember the hot, wet rush of blood spilling out over him.

It was harder to aim with the dead weight of a body on him, but Yuuya didn't miss a second time.

That agent comes to him sometimes, standing quietly in the halls with old, dark blood covering his shirt. Yuuya was too frightened to look at his face when Leone pulled his body off of him, so the figure he sees now has blurred, indistinct features.

Every time he comes, Yuuya thanks him for saving his life. The specter doesn't speak to him. They never do. But Yuuya thanks him anyway.

The second visitor was a woman Yuuya found stabbed in an alleyway. He had heard her scream and come running, but he hadn't been fast enough to see her assailant. He put pressure on the wound and called for an ambulance and the police, but he was sure that the wound was too close to her heart for her to survive. She was losing blood so quickly.

She was beautiful, even with the color draining from her face. Perhaps, Yuuya thought, that was why she had been killed. Perhaps some foolish, disgusting specimen of a man had thought himself entitled to her beauty and murdered her for refusing him. He doesn't know for sure. He hadn't asked her questions. Yuuya spent her last moments assuring her that she would be alright, that paramedics would be there soon, that they would make it in time. Yuuya is a trained liar, after all.

He couldn't save her, but he at least made sure she wasn't alone when she passed.

When she comes, he makes her a cup of tea. She can't drink it, of course, but it feels right to sit across from her with his own mug. She deserves kindness, even after death.

Yuuya gets many such visitors. People like him see a lot of death. There are people he killed, people he couldn't save, people he foolishly allowed to get caught in crossfire, people he didn't protect. They are all potential visitors on nights he doesn't have other guests, but there is one who comes much more frequently than anyone else.

It's never a surprise to see him. Whenever he arrives, dripping with blood and embryo, with fragments of shell still clinging to his skin, Yuuya makes him a cup of hot cocoa. He uses the fine French powder, the kind his parents made for him back in their little home in the countryside. It was a luxury that didn't suit the small property attached to his father's leather workshop, but Yuuya's mother always said that good quality chocolate is worth its price. Drinking it, Yuuya always had to agree, and even his father couldn't argue then.

Yuuya doesn't have as much of a sweet tooth as he used to, but he still spends much of his salary importing France's finest hot cocoa so that he never runs the risk of running out. It is his brother, after all. He deserves a small luxury like this, at the very least, for what Yuuya did to him.

He doesn't have a face either. That's Yuuya's fault. He'll never know if his half-brother would have inherited his mother's looks, like Sakuya did, or if he'd resemble his accursed father instead. Yuuya will never know if he would have loved art the way their mother does, music the way Sakuya does, power the way Le Bel does. No one will ever know that.

Yuuya has full one-sided conversations with his murdered half-brother. He tells him about St. Pigeonation’s, about the city, about Iwamine's awful experiments. He tells him about their mother, about how beautiful she was before her husband was killed, and about how beautiful she still is after being robbed of a spouse and a child. He tells him about his and Sakuya's father, who was a kind and loving man for all that he lacked rank. Their mother hadn't run away from everything she had to be with him on a whim. Yuuya doesn't talk about Le Bel. He fails to see the point of ever talking about Le Bel. Instead, he talks about Sakuya.

He talks about the years just after Sakuya was born, when Yuuya was still permitted to be around him. He tells him about learning French with a fervor because it was the only language Le Bel wanted Sakuya to speak at first, and Yuuya hadn't picked up as much French from his mother as he needed. He tells him about teaching Sakuya Japanese in secret at night, about the beatings he endured when he was caught, about his persistence forcing Le Bel to concede that Sakuya be allowed to learn his mother's language as well as his supposed father's. He tells him how much it hurt Yuuya to leave Sakuya when he was finally banished from the main house, and how his mother sent him secret letters to tell him how Sakuya was doing after Yuuya left.

He tells him how marvelously Sakuya plays the piano, how he makes the music come alive in a way that Yuuya could never hope to achieve. He wishes their brother could hear him play, but even Yuuya has to sneak through the empty school halls to hear him.

Yuuya tells him that he is sorry. It would be a lie if he said he wished he hadn't chosen Sakuya over him; Yuuya killed for Sakuya, he would die for Sakuya, and he will do anything and everything he can to protect Sakuya. But he does regret choosing to protect only one of his precious little brothers. He had been a selfish child, and nothing he does will ever make up for that. 

His murdered brother stands silent in the kitchen as Yuuya finishes his cocoa, hovers soundlessly over his shoulder as he washes up, watches him from the shadows as Yuuya slides under the bedcovers. This is a form of haunting, that's clear enough. And yet, somehow, Yuuya is never afraid.

_Bonne nuit,_ Yuuya tells him as he closes his eyes. _Good night, and rest easy, dear brother._

  


Hiyoko comes to him sometimes these days. Yuuya is always happy to see her. He misses her. She had been so good for Sakuya in the short time that they had her. Even if he hadn't figured out that he liked her by the time she died, even if they wouldn't have ended up together. Just having someone around him who wasn't afraid to call him out for his aristocratic ridiculousness made a huge difference. She was special. Sakuya respected her.

He misses her for himself sometimes, too. He wonders if he is allowed to do that. Hiyoko was always so kind to everyone. Spies don't get much compassion, but Hiyoko always wanted to make sure he was okay. She even invited him to her cave for dinner once or twice.

He hadn't killed her. Yuuya had not been responsible for her death. But he had desecrated her body. He wonders if that is worse.

She comes to him whole, at least. He sees her the way he found her, when Iwamine first called him to the infirmary to do his dirty work for him. But it doesn't matter that he sees her unmutilated because he still remembers what it felt like to cut into her flesh. He remembers what it felt like to take her apart piece by piece, one more person’s blood staining his filthy hands.

Yuuya didn't kill her. But he allowed Iwamine's work to continue, even when he knew students were dying, until eventually Hiyoko was one of the casualties. So he didn't kill her, but he let her die, and he dismembered her, so isn't that just as bad?

He wishes she would talk. Hiyoko was never quiet. It doesn't suit her explosive personality to be a silent specter. Maybe this is itself a disservice to her.

If she could speak, she might even forgive him. Not that he deserves it. She was just better than him, in all ways. He doesn't deserve forgiveness, but she would give it to him. He doesn't deserve concern, but she gave it to him. She deserved happiness, and he took it from her. He wishes she could talk. He doesn't even know if she knows that he's sorry.

She still smiles, though. She still has that sunshine grin, and Yuuya still smiles back at her.


End file.
